Sur les traces de l’Afrique fantôme, 1990
Between May 1988 and January 1990, the photographer François Huguier went through the Dakar-Djibouti Mission which crossed Africa from West to East from May 1931 to February 1933. Her travel guide is “L’Afrique Fantôme” by Michel Leiris, the Mission’s secretary-archivist.
In ten years of regular journeys, Mali has become more familiar than Brittany to Françoise Huguier: she did not discover Africa through the diary of Leiris, and the changes that have taken place since the Dakar-Djibouti Mission where not her subject. The “before and after” affect is not what is hitting in the photographs she taken. Her photographs do not say: is not anymore what it used to be, poor Africa etc. On the contrary, they support Leiris’ “sentimental construction” and restitute the “taste for the marvelous” that brought him to Africa.
Michel Cressole
Senegal
Mali
Burkina Fasso
Togo – Benin
Nigeria
Cameroon
Sudan
Ethiopie
Djibouti
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